Where do my events show up?
In the calendar apps you already use: Google Calendar, Outlook or Apple Calendar.
Hetk has no calendar of its own for you to look at, and it doesn’t build you a new one. It copies events from one of your calendars into another. You then open your usual calendar app, and the copies are there, next to your own events. If you want to print your calendar, print it from that app.
The Hetk app at app.hetk.io is only where you set things up.
Setting it up
- Sign in at app.hetk.io with Google or Microsoft.
- Connect your accounts. Add each account whose calendar you want to use. Google and Microsoft show you their own sign-in screen. Apple iCloud asks for an app-specific password, which you create in your Apple Account settings (how to create one).
- Start a new sync. Pick the calendar to copy from and the calendar to copy to. Then choose one-way, or both ways.
- Choose what the copies show. Keep the event’s details, or replace them with “Busy”.
- Choose what to skip, if you want to. The Filters step shows your week as Hetk would sync it. Add a rule to skip events you don’t want copied: all-day events, events that show you as free, tentative events, one colour (in Outlook, a category), or a word in the title. The week redraws as you add rules, so you see what a rule skips before you create the sync. Add no rules and every event is copied. You can change the rules later, from the sync’s Edit page.
- Create it. The last step shows what you chose. Press Create and start, and Hetk starts copying.
Nothing is copied until you create a sync. Connecting accounts on its own does nothing. A sync is one pair of calendars. If you want three calendars to share events, you need more than one sync.
Want a dry run first? Test Hetk on spare calendars before you connect the ones that matter. Words like “sync pair” are explained in the glossary.
Checking that it worked
Open the calendar you copied to, in its own app, and look at the next few days. You should see copies of the events from the other calendar. Changes in Google Calendar and Outlook usually arrive within seconds, through push notifications. A safety check runs every 15 minutes in case a notification is missed. Apple iCloud has no push. Hetk checks iCloud every 5 minutes, and less often for a calendar that has been quiet.
An event that one of your rules skips is drawn faded in the sync’s Calendar View, with the rule under it, for example “Skipped: all-day”. It has no copy because you asked for that. It is not a failure.
Hetk copies events from the past month and the next 12 months. Events outside that range are not copied. A change to an event more than a few weeks away can take a few hours to show up.
What a copy looks like
A copy is an ordinary event in your calendar, with a few differences:
- It keeps the title, place and notes, unless you change that. Each sync has two settings for this, and both start off. Replace the details with “Busy” makes the copy show only the time. Flag the copy as private lets you still see the details, while people you share that calendar with, like a colleague looking at your work calendar, see only “Busy”. Turn one on if you don’t want others to see what you’re doing.
- It has no guests. A copy never carries the guest list, so nobody gets an invitation because of a copy.
- It has no reminder. The original event already reminds you.
- A repeating event arrives as single events, one on each date.
- It carries a hidden tag that tells Hetk “I made this”. You won’t see it. It’s how Hetk knows which events are its copies, so it never copies a copy back.
To change an event, change the original. Hetk keeps the copy in step with it.
Please don’t start over
If something looks wrong, please don’t delete your account and sign up again, and don’t make a second account.
- You end up with doubles. When you delete an account, the copies it made stay in your calendar. A new account doesn’t know about them, so it copies the same events again.
- You lose your setup. The syncs you already made don’t come with you.
Write to us at [email protected] instead. Tell us what you expected to see and what you see now. We can look at your setup and fix it where it is.
When something looks wrong
Nothing shows up. Check that you created a sync, not just connected your accounts. Then check the dates: only the past month and the next 12 months are copied.
An event didn’t copy. Check your filters first. Open the sync’s Calendar View (the calendar icon on the sync card) and click the event. If a rule skipped it, it says which one.
The copies just say “Busy”. Replace the details with “Busy” is on for that sync. It starts off, so someone turned it on. Open the sync’s settings in the app and turn it off. If your IT admin made syncs from your work account private, you can’t turn it off.
The app asks you to reconnect an account. Google, Microsoft or Apple has stopped letting Hetk in, for example after a password change. Reconnect the account in the app and syncing picks up again.
You see the same event twice. Check that you don’t have two syncs between the same two calendars. If the doubles stay, write to us before you delete events by hand.
Anything else: [email protected].